Labor attack on international students just weasel words

Labor is blowing a dog whistle about international students taking Australian jobs.

Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten.

We know how we got into this situation.

Labor leader Bill Shorten steadfastly denied his parliamentarians had any problem with foreign citizenship so, instead of there being a big day of by-elections last year when both sides would have had seats in play, Bill is stuck with this weekend’s Super Saturday in which four of the five electorates are Labor’s to lose.

Two of them, Longman and Braddon, could be government wins, and if that happens it may even signal the end of Shorten’s political career.

So why wouldn’t he choose the desperation tactic and blow a dog whistle about international students taking Australian jobs? Especially as Longman (north of Brisbane) is in Pauline Hanson country and Braddon (in northern Tasmania) has a depressed economy with high youth unemployment?

The result is that we have seen Labor’s employment spokesman Brendan O’Connor make the surprising suggestion that it could be time to cap the number of international students coming to Australia because students are abusing their work rights and also being exploited by employers.

Really? Does he wish to place an artificial curb on Australia’s third largest export industry, international education, which earned $31 billion in the past 12 months, 15 per cent more than in the previous 12 months?

O’Connor also claimed that international students are signing up for “Mickey Mouse courses” to game the immigration system. Perhaps he forgets that the former Labor government, of which he was a member, clamped down on that rort very effectively eight years ago with stronger vetting and regulation, and it is not noticeably a problem now.

Of course, putting a cap on student numbers would be “a last resort”, O’Connor says. Vetting (more of it) would be the first option, according to him.

How is it best to describe the opposition’s performance on this issue? The collective nouns for the word “weasel” include “sneak” and “confusion”. I submit they also be the collective noun for Labor’s weasel words.

This is not to suggest the party is on its own in whipping up baseless fears about immigration and race to win elections.

But you would be entitled to think better of it.

Australia’s education exports are an extraordinary success story. Soon, because of Britain’s misguided journey into Brexit and its withdrawal from the world, Australia is likely to move up and steal Britain’s place as the world’s second largest education exporter.

What an achievement! The question is: How do we make sure it’s a long-term one?

Part of the answer is to diversify away from China, from where more than 30 per cent of our international students originate. We also need to recognise that work rights (just what Labor wants to limit) are needed to encourage more students from countries poorer than China to come here.

And yes, abuse of students in the workplace is a problem. O’Connor is correct about that. Action is occurring to help deal with it, including a government inquiry headed by Alan Fels.

But the fact that some students are exploited is hardly a reason to argue we have too many international students.

There are also other problems in the international student market. But none of them is insuperable and none would justify a deliberate decision to make the industry smaller.

However, right now international education is a convenient political plaything. Roll on Saturday and we might see reason on the other side.